Textual Analysis of Vibe Magazine

Denotation:
This magazine cover consists of a profile close up image of a man's face. it is a black and white image and we only see the males scarf and face in the picture, the background is white, which helps bring out the man's facial structure. In the image the man is looking away for the camera. The image fills up the whole cover page of the magazine. slightly above the man's forehead there is a title and just below that there is a special edition masthead of Vibe. There are only three colours used on this cover which are white, black and red. There is only one cover line on the cover page which is written in red and white bold font. Nothing else is visible on this page.

Masthead:
Vibe magazines masthead is very distinctive. It uses a sans serif font and the v is always slightly italic. The typetography is very bold and clean cut which connotes that the magazine is about bold and loud characters. The name vibe also connotes that it wants the audience to feed of a certain musical energy the magazine is trying to give off. This tells us that the target audience is people who like to listen to music and feed off of it's energy.

Character:
The model for the cover is famous American rapper 'Jay-Z'.

Composition:
He has been directed to pose in a very subtle way (turning away from us) but yet still looks quite angry/aggressive or unintrested. This just conforms to stereotypical male masculinity. He looks like he holds some type of authority in this photograph.

Costume:
Because this is a close up we can't really see any form of costume apart from the Louis Vitton scarf that is wrapped around his neck. This might have been chosen to show that his music can be relate able to everyone, be it simpletons or the wealthy kids.

Non-verbal communication:
His non verbal communication is quite cold and he looks a bit uninterested in the camera but more focused on something out of the shot.

Lighting:
There seems to be a lot of high key natural light as the photograph is in black and white to bring out a more subtle image.

Setting:
There is not much too see about the setting as we can only see a plain white background.

Cover Line:
There is only one visible cover line which relates to Jay-Z's accomplishments in his career. But they do not give too much detail away as to what the actual story behind the cover line is. The cover line still uses a sans serif font which shows that the editors of the magazine want everything to look uniformed and traditional to their well known masthead font. By just having one main cover line it may make readers more interested in just one story rather than other articles in the magazine.

Title:
The title above the masthead does however give readers a bit more information on what they will be reading and what they should expect to see in the magazine. 'Juice issue' may suggest that the magazine will be giving away all of the best gossip since it was first published 15 years ago.

Target Audience:
Taking all of these points into consideration, the target audience for this magazine seems to be urban 16-30 year old people, mainly men, as it explores the history of HIP-HOP and Rap in this issue.